Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

237 and interests of those in control. In his view, education, particularly the process of learning to read and write, “can become an instrument of social transformation by making those at the bottom of society aware of their plight and the reasons for it.” In practice, refined through literacy campaigns among peasants in the Brazilian Northeast beginning in the late 1950s and later on four continents, Mr. Freire and his many disciples have relied on words like “hunger” or “land,” chosen for their relevance to the pupil’s own political and social situation, to teach peasants and workers to read and write. The objective is to develop among them what Mr. Friere calls “a critical comprehension of reality.” ...But Mr. Freire also argues that his distinct education has considerable relevance in the industrialized nations of the capitalist world. Mr. Freire’s methods have been adapted in the United States by feminist, Hispanic and black groups that operate adult literacy programs or train teachers. Even some corporations, such as Consolidated Edison in New York, have at various times used his techniques in education programs for new workers with low levels of formal education. “I am not a technician of literacy, as many people apparently saw me in the beginning,” he said. “I am an educator who thinks globally.”... To some of his critics, including the Reagan Administration, Mr. Freire’s emphasis on the practical has been taken to an absurd extreme in Nicaragua, where second graders count not apples or oranges but hand grenades and rifles to learn arithmetic. [Ed. Note: See the 1993 entry for the Michigan High School Proficiency Communications Arts Framework which deals with the constructivist philosophy behind whole language and carries out Friere’s philosophy of social transformation through “critical thinking.”] The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1986 T HE N EW Y ORK T IMES OF A UGUST 31, 1986 CARRIED AN ARTICLE ENTITLED “S TUDY S AYS 33% of Young Adults Are Illiterate.” Excerpt follows: Results from College Graduates: The most recent Federal study was conducted by two pri vate groups, the Educational Testing Service and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, at a cost of $1.8 million. In testing basic skills at various levels, the study found that one in three young adults with a college degree from a two- or four-year school failed to answer this question correctly: If one purchased a sandwich for $1.90, a bowl of soup for 60 cents, and gave the cashier $3, how much change should he receive? The answer is 50 cents. (p. 28) G EORGE R OCHE , PRESIDENT OF H ILLSDALE C OLLEGE , H ILLSDALE , M ICHIGAN , AND CHAIR man of the National Council on Educational Research, a presidentially appointed council overseeing the activities of the National Institute of Education, requested an investigation into the controversial Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory’s (NWREL) Tri-County K–12 Course Goals Project which was initiated in 1971. Joan Gubbins, a former Indiana state senator and chairman of the council’s Improvement and Practice Committee, researched the Goals Project, prepared, and submitted her report entitled “Goals and Objectives: Towards a National Curriculum?” to the Council on September 26, 1986. Although Senator Gubbins’s important report could have been used as a brief documenting the illegality of NWREL’s role in development of the Course Goals, it evidently fell on deaf ears. Had the premise of this report—that the goals were based on humanistic no right/no wrong